Tag Archives: Watergate

WHAT TODD BLANCHE FAILED TO LEARN FROM WATERGATE

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[This article first appeared at Common Dreams on July 16, 2026.]

In 1974, Watergate culminated in the first-ever resignation of a sitting U.S. president. As Richard Nixon left office, his closest advisers were in prison – or heading there. Among them were attorneys who broke the law that they had sworn to uphold, including his former attorney general John Mitchell.

Acting AG Todd Blanche now seeks Mitchell’s job.

· Like Mitchell, Blanche was a successful lawyer at a prominent New York law firm before joining the president’s team.

· Like Mitchell, Blanche has served the president slavishly. He personally interviewed Jeffrey Epstein’s imprisoned co-conspirator Ghislane Maxwell who then got reassigned to a Club Fed; he guided the unlawfully incomplete release of the DOJ’s Epstein files; he spearheaded the effort to prosecute Trump’s perceived enemies; and he defended ICE agents publicly after they killed innocent Americans.

· And like Mitchell, Blanche’s ploys for Trump are sending him to a dark place.

The Latest Court Ruling

Blanche figures prominently in the recent opinion of Judge Kathleen Williams of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida. She ruled that Trump’s purported settlement of his $10 billion case against the IRS was a collusive farce.

The government had strong defenses to Trump’s lawsuit claim, including the statute of limitations bar; it asserted none of them. That’s not surprising: Trump controlled the executive branch (including the IRS), which put him on both sides of the supposed dispute. Such a clear conflict of interest meant that there was no real “adverseness” between the plaintiff and defendant and, therefore, no “justiciable case or controversy” for the court to decide.

The purported settlement agreement established a $1.776 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund” to compensate, among others, January 6 insurrectionists whom Trump had pardoned. A separate, three-paragraph “release order” forever immunized Trump, his family members, and related parties from IRS investigations, claims, and audits that have haunted him for decades.

The court had harsh words – and sanctions – for the lawyers involved in perpetrating this abuse of the court process at taxpayers’ expense:

· Alejandro Brito represented Trump as plaintiff in the case. The judge referred him to the Florida Bar for consideration, review, and determination as to whether disciplinary action is appropriate.

· Daniel Z. Epstein’s name appeared on the complaint, and he signed the purported “settlement agreement” on behalf of plaintiff Trump. Epstein was a former White House senior associate counsel and special assistant to President Trump from 2017 until 2020. Because he is licensed to practice in Texas, not Florida, the judge barred his future applications to practice pro hac vice (special admission for a particular case) in the Southern District of Florida for a year or until her further order.

· Stanley Woodward Jr., associate attorney general under Blanche at the Department of Justice, signed the bogus “settlement agreement” on behalf of the DOJ. The court observed that Woodward had “represented several individuals charged in connection with the events of January 6, 2021, at the United States Capitol. He also represented Walt Nauta, who was President Trump’s personal aide and a co-defendant in the criminal matter involving the return of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago.” The judge directed the clerk to send a copy of her 56-page ruling to the District of Columbia bar, where disciplinary proceedings are ongoing against Woodward.

Blanche’s Plight

And the court turned repeatedly to Todd Blanche:

· His signature alone was on the IRS “release order.” Its attempt to waive tax audits contravened federal law prohibiting “executive branch influence over taxpayer audits and other investigations.”

· Judge Williams was “extremely troubled” by Blanche’s congressional testimony on May 19, 2026, as to why the settlement agreement was not submitted to the court for review. She found his answer “at best, misleading and, at worst, disingenuous.”

· The court noted, “In this case,… notwithstanding his prior representation of President Trump, Blanche did not recuse [himself]” from the IRS matter.

· Blanche’s congressional testimony that the “Anti-Weaponization Fund” aspect of the settlement would not go forward proved that the entire agreement was collusive: “Acting Attorney General Blanche’s apparent capacity to speak for both Plaintiffs and Defendants, sign a ‘settlement’ document on behalf of all Parties to this action, and then repudiate part of that agreement, demonstrates that there was only one party whose interests were being represented throughout this case.” That party was Donald Trump.

· Finally, she directed the clerk to send a copy of her ruling to the State Bar of New York, where Blanche is licensed. On June 22, 2026, more than 100 former state and federal judges had already filed a 73-page ethics complaint against him there.

A Freudian Slip and an Unhappy Ending

Early in Blanche’s confirmation hearing on July 15, Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) asked him about his relationship with Trump.

“I’m his lawyer,” Blanche replied, before correcting himself to say that he “was” his lawyer.

Blanche’s initial impulse was closer to the mark. And he has already compromised his professional reputation and personal integrity.

In the service of Nixon personally, John Mitchell was convicted of conspiracy, obstruction of justice, and perjury in connection with his role in the Watergate break-in of the Democratic National Committee headquarters and subsequent cover-up. He spent 19 months in prison and lost his law license.

Will Todd Blanche see how his loyalty to Trump personally – rather than to the nation he has taken an oath to serve – is leading him to an unfortunate destination? Probably not.

Will he learn anything from Judge Williams’s stunning rebuke or the ethics complaints he already faces? Probably not.

Will enough Republican senators stand up and refuse to confirm Blanche, who is blatantly unqualified to be the next attorney general? Probably not.

All Americans will bear the consequences of his failures.

BLAGO, CLEMENS, AND LAWYERS

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Advising a client to do something he or she wants to do is easy. Giving  counsel that contradicts a professed desire is a lot tougher.

When Ed Genson, one of Chicago’s top criminal defense lawyers, resigned his representation of Rod Blagojevich in January 2009, he said:

“I have been practicing law for 44 years. I never require a client to do what I say, but I do require them to at least listen to what I say…I intend to withdraw as counsel in this case. And I wish the governor good luck and Godspeed.”  ( http://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local-beat/genson-quits-blagojevich-criminal-case-012309.html#ixzz0x9jPaEpt)

At the time, Blago had just begun what became his protracted media blitz. He hadn’t yet learned the self-described lesson of his sobering guilty verdict: “I talk too much.”  Although Genson didn’t elaborate on the reasons for abandoning his leading role as defense counsel in a high-profile case, it’s fair to assume that his inability to prevent Rod from using  television, radio, and a book tour to proclaim his innocence was an important factor.

Uncontrollable clients get their lawyers and themselves into trouble. I sometimes brought clients back to reality with a simple statement: “People brighter than you are in prisons all over America because they thought they were too smart to get caught.”

Which takes us to Roger Clemens. When persuasion alone doesn’t deter a self-destructive client, a lawyer’s options are limited. Sometimes a threatened resignation reins them in; at other times, even following through on the threat doesn’t.

Then again, there’s the possibility that the attorney blew it. I can’t say that Clemens’s lawyers gave him bad advice because, like the rest of us, I’ll never know what that advice was. But the chronology of the events leading to his recent indictment for lying to Congress raises interesting questions.

The story began in December 2007, when former Senator George Mitchell released his report about the widespread use of illegal, performance-enhancing drugs. Clemens and fellow Yankees pitcher Andy Pettitte were the most prominent of the implicated players. Pettitte eventually admitted taking HGH while recovering from an injury.

On a January 6, 2008 episode of 60 Minutes, Clemens steadfastly denied the claims. At the same moment, his lawyers were filing a defamation suit against the trainer who’d provided Mitchell with the incriminating testimony.

Meanwhile, the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform continued its investigation into the matter. A week after Clemens’s 60 Minutes appearance, noted trial lawyer Rusty Hardin released this statement:

“I want to make very clear that there has been absolutely no change in Roger’s willingness and indeed desire to testify under oath before Congress in a public hearing at a date of the Oversight Committee’s choosing. Any suggestion that he or we are having any second thoughts about that is absolutely false.”  (http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=3194113)

House Committee Chairman Waxman later took Hardin’s comments a step farther, saying that he and the ranking Republican had decided that no public hearing was needed because prior depositions would suffice.

“[T]he only reason we had the hearing was because Roger Clemens and his lawyers insisted on it,” Waxman said. “Roger Clemens’s lawyers told us he wanted the opportunity to make his case in public.”  (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/15/sports/baseball/15clemens.html )

In its totality, Clemens’s strategy was the litigation equivalent of “shock-and-awe” warfare.

When it became clear that the hearing had gone badly for Clemens, Hardin called Waxman’s statements “unbelievable, disingenuous and outrageous.” But according to the same Times article, “Once the depositions were taken…the Clemens side felt it had no choice but to proceed, fearing that the committee would use the depositions to produce a hostile written report. ‘We wanted this out in the open,’ Hardin said.” So Waxman appears to have the better of the “whose bad idea was this anyway?” argument.

In any event, this much is certain: Clemens didn’t have to: 1) appear on 60 Minutes; 2) file a defamation lawsuit on the Sunday evening that the show aired (or ever); or 3) tell Congress anything (unless it first chose to grant him immunity).

So what do Clemens and his lawyers have to show for their efforts?    

In February 2009, a judge dismissed most of Clemens’ defemation claims against his former trainer. The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed on August 12, 2010. The public has long forgotten about the Mitchell Report, but Clemens himself remains headline news. One of the great pitchers of all time now faces unpleasant proceedings that could culminate in a prison sentence.

I assume that his capable attorneys explained how high-profile politicians and celebrities consistently fail to learn the most important lesson of Richard Nixon’s shame. He resigned the Presidency over obstruction of justice charges stemming from a subsequent cover-up — not the original sin of breaking into Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate. It’s rarely the underlying offense that creates the biggest problem. It’s what people say and do in its aftermath.

I also assume that Clemens’s lawyers were counseling him to keep his mouth shut and his profile low at every stage of that evolving circus. But the record on that is ambiguous, at best.

Blago is right that the jury failed to reach a verdict on 23 of the 24 counts against him. Whether he sought to exchange a Senate seat for campaign contributions will be decided another day. But unless an appeallate court reverses, he’ll go to jail for lying when the government asked him about his practices.

With the former governor back on the road again — and on the way to The Daily Show, among others — I’ll bet Ed Genson has lost little sleep over his wise decision to cut his former client loose.

I suspect that Clemens’s lawyers don’t think they have that option.